Oreomisu

By Aneesah, 1 Feb 11

Hello all!

Due to my decreasing interests in blogging about my boring, “busy” student life (reasons being… 1]Tumblr is so much funner and quicker, though also entirely unrelated to my personal life. 2] I now find little benefit in relating the story of my life to the world, because 3] it’s not that fascinating anyway, and 4] I doubt people care.), and to prevent this blog from being reduced to a dust-collector – here I am posting a recipe entry.

Yes. Food. Something even busy-yet-lazy students need to survive. And unless you have someone to cook for you every day (which *cough* was the case for my housemates and I for the past month or so… [thank you Syerin’s mum!]), you gotta learn how to cook, yo. I’m not so much into cooking as I am into baking (I’m sure it’s a personality thing – some people much prefer toss-this-toss-that, stovetop, meal-type food, whereas I making cookies and brownies and pies and casseroles). But this dessert recipe doesn’t even involve cooking, yay!

I am, however, big on recipes with photos, so there will be loads of those here. (Incidentally, some of my favourite recipe blogs with huge photos are The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Smitten Kitchen. They are a w e s o m e, or like the trend goes in Malay, t e r b a e k !)

You will need…

Oreos, or the equivalent. About 2.5 single-sleeve packets for the size of dish below.

I reckon this is about 9" x 9" -ish? This is a casserole / baking dish, but you can use any sort, since this is only going into the fridge.

Fresh milk in a bowl. In this case I added instant coffee, but I've also made this without the coffee before, and the final product kinda tastes the same, so... either way goes. I reckon you could also go the traditional way with just water and coffee.

Cream cheese, or mascarpone cheese if you're rich. I used two of these 300g tubs, although that's a bit more than necessary. 400-500g should be ok.

One tin (~400g) of sweetened condensed milk, a.k.a. susu pekat.

Vanilla flavouring or extract, two teaspoons.

This is my one big shopping mistake – the recipe needs whipping cream, not crème fraîche (which I accidentally bought because I recalled a cheesecake recipe that used this). So use single/double/heavy/whipping cream, ok pals? One small tub, which is about... I dunno, half-pint? It doesn't really matter.

What you do:

Separate the cookies, and scrape all the filling off into a bowl. Oreos here seem to have tougher filling than back in Malaysia – though it might just be the climate, so fillings here go hard. Also – double-stuf Oreos do not seem to exist around here... such a tragedy.

Put the cookies onto a plate – NOT YOUR MOUTH – for now. You will really need a lot, so keep separating and be patient.

The sweet vanilla-y cream filling. Remember – NOT IN YOUR MOUTH.

Now that the hard part's done, whip out your electric mixer and whip the cream for a few minutes. Add the cheese, vanilla, and condensed milk and mix till it looks good.

Add in the Oreo filling that you so dilligently scraped out. Mix some more.

You should NOT be getting a texture like this. It should be less dense and less ... streaky (more smooth of a texture). Crème fraîche is more like sour cream than whipping cream.

The fun part begins. Dunk an Oreo into the milk and lift it out with a fork.

Arrange in the dish, starting from one corner. (The cookies do soften quite quickly so don't disturb them once they're flat in there.)

First layer done! You can use half-cookies or broken bits to fill in the gaps.

Generously spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the previous layer. Yours should look nicer and not as thick as mine.

Repeat the cookie-dunking, arranging, and cream-spreading, until you run out. I got three layers of cookies and cream here, which is perfect. More is good, too. But you'd need a LOT of cookies for that. The topmost layer should be the cream.

After the final cream layer, if you have extra cookies, take 2 or 3 and crumble them up, either with a food processor, your hands, or a pestle and mortar like I did.

Sprinkle the magic Oreo dust all over the top layer. Again, this is a bit much, but hey – no wasting food.

Anddddd you're done! Except you have to put this in the fridge for about two hours (or more), for the cookies to soak and the layers to set. Patience!

When it's time, cut out a square(ish) slice, and DIG IN!

Yum. Be sure to keep the rest in the fridge, covered with cling wrap. Don't eat too much at a time, share with others, and enjoy!

so far the ones at ASDA — that says “Flavouring” doesn’t state alcohol in the ingredients. The ones labelled “Extract” lists alcohol. So we buy vanilla flavouring, in the understanding that it doesn’t involve the addition of alcohol. Although I have also read that if the precentage is less than a certain amount, food manufacturers are not required to list the content in the ingredients list.

Basically tak berapa menjawab soalan ek? We can also pegang pendapat (I believe mazhab Hanafi) which states the insignificant amount allows it to be permissible. Same as how some types of vinegar have alcohol used in the process. Wallahua’lam.

I am not one to count calories (at all), but here’s a tip: share with pleeentttyyy of people. It will force the portions to become smaller. At the least, everybody else will become fat along with you.
On a serious note, though, I don’t often eat these kinds of desserts at all, but I do believe in enjoying the good things in life. Bersederhanalah dalam segala segi.

Find the photo that has this caption: “Now that the hard part’s done, whip out your electric mixer and whip the cream for a few minutes. Add the cheese, vanilla, and condensed milk and mix till it looks good.” The cream refers to whipping cream, of course.